


The Youth and Technology: Evolution or Addiction?

by notjuli



Series: School Work [3]
Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Cell Phones, Mentions of addiction, Technology, Translation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:26:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21572179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notjuli/pseuds/notjuli
Summary: A chronicle I wrote for one of my classes (Language and Literature) this year, about technology and the youth.
Series: School Work [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1556440
Kudos: 4





	The Youth and Technology: Evolution or Addiction?

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Jóvenes y Tecnología: ¿Evolución o Adictos?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21563053) by [notjuli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notjuli/pseuds/notjuli). 



> This is a translation of one of my own works I originally wrote in Spanish (which is my first language).  
> This translation was done in one morning in like an hour, so if you notice any errors please do let me know in the comments, and if there's any sentence/idiom that doesn't really make sense please tell me as well bc I realised as I translated this that translateing idioms is weird lmao.

Nowadays we're all constantly connected; the internet is an essential feature in the lives of most of the world's population, and smartphones only helped expand that, making it more present and accessible.

In Argentina, half of the population keeps their phone within reach during at least half of the day, and it's ten times more people who have their phones with them all day long than those who use it less than an hour a day.

Statistically speaking, ninety-five percent of teenagers have phones, and they (teenagers) are more prone to addiction, so we have to ask; are teenagers addicted to their phones? Is technology having negative effects on us? Should we do something about this?

We decided to investigate this, raise a theory and then test it in ourselves; here we'll tell you our experiences.

It's undeniable the existence of modern technology in our everyday lives, always present in many forms but, especially, in our phones.  _ Everyone has a phone, _ is a generalisation usually made, and it's not so far off either.

Technology is within our reach and it brings us an incredible amount of comfort; it's comfortable to use, it can help us in (almost?) every situation, etc. Why would we give this up? Because we "are addicted"? I don't think so.

> **addiction** _ \- /əˈdɪkʃ(ə)n/ _ _ \- noun _
> 
> habit of dangerous behaviors or consumption of certain substances, especially drugs, and which cannot be dispensed with or it is very difficult to do so for reasons of psychological, physical or even mental dependence.

The word addiction carries with a negative connotation that we don't think it applies in most cases. Are there people addicted to their phones? Most definitely, in the same way that there's people addicted to eating human ashes and people addicted to drinking motor oil, but we can't say that they are a majority. (Yes, those two cases exist, they are real cases of real people with real addiction. I'm not making that up.)

Do I use my phone a lot? Yes, I use it for much of the day. Am I addicted to my phone because I use it that much? I think not.

I use my phone as a device that makes my life easier, but if I didn't have my phone I would do all the same things I do on it from another device. Most of the things I use my phone for I could also do them from my computer for example, but using my phone instead it's more comfortable and convenient at times.

For this essay, the assignment was to document a whole day in our lives without using mobile apps. I took it one step further and decided not to use my phone all day long, which is basically the same thing. And I did it; I didn't touch my phone all day. But I did the same things I usually do, this time from our computer instead.

I really like reading, and I'm constantly doing so from my phone, again, for a comfort issue. This day instead, I read from my e-book and from my computer. I could've checked my social networks from my computer, I googled every single question I had through the day from my computer, I listened to the same podcasts I often listen to online and I watched YouTube videos as I often do; my life didn't change much because I didn't use my phone.

It is true that maybe I don't use many apps from my phone, or especially for my phone; most of what I usually use my phone for I can still do from other devices. If could also be said that, technically, I cheated, I found the hole in the assignment, but in my defense, there's no escape to technology. And I'm not sure why one would want one either.

This very same paragraph I'm writing it from my phone (both the original paragraph and now the translation), just like half of this essay. And again, it's because it's more comfortable to do so.

In my case it happens something similar but not so much. I use my phone for everything. I use it to stream music constantly and WhatsApp It's essential to me.

Technology is not a bad thing, on the contrary. I don't understand why people (generalisation- adults;  _ baby boomers _ and  _ gen X _ ) are so scared of it. They see today's youth ( _ millennials _ and  _ gen Z _ ) so very adepts to these technologies they don't understand and they get angry. "What are you doing on your phone all day long?", "Kids these days don't have conversations! They get together and they are each on their phone." But then they're the first ones to come running asking for help. "The PC is not working! What did you touch? Can you fix it?" And 'fixing it' means connecting the screen. "Someone changed something on my phone!" When they themselves moved the icons around and now can't find anything nor move them back into place. It's ridiculous.

To us, the younger generations, that's not a problem, because we were born or we lived with these technologies since our childhood. (And the fact that a big percentage of the adult population (boomers and gen X's) refuse to learn at all is a topic for another day, but I also have quite a lot to say about that. But I'm already rambling too much.)

We know that technology is not a bad thing, but having to explain it over and over again to the older generations is tiring. They don't want to accept the change, I guess, but sometimes they act as if they wanted to go back to the paleolithic caverns or something.

"In my time this didn't happen," "in my time dinner was a sacred family moment," "in my time we used to talk to people." Yeah well, and in grandma's time microwaves didn't exist, do you want us to stop using them as well?

No, of course not. The microwave is a fantastic invention, it helps us a lot and we use it all the time, just like everyone does. But no one is angry because someone uses their microwave a lot, right?

And why are phones different? Technology is constantly moving forward, and things like phones or the internet are, objectively (said by some Harvard geniuses, not just us), some of humanity's best inventions. And not just like that; cassettes, VHS, CD's, DVD's, they barely exist anymore, we've got YouTube, Spotify, Netflix and so many others for that.

A day without these technologies in our lives doesn't exist for us. Were immersed in these technologies within our reach all the time. In the comfort of watching whichever movie we can think of or listening to any song in an instant, of playing any game wherever we want to, of talking with someone halfway across the planet as if they were right next to us, everything one moment after the other. And it's fantastic.

And I'm not saying here that technology can't do bad things, because of course it can. Using technology to do evil is so easy. But the same thing happens with half of humanity's inventions or discoveries. Discovering the principles of nuclear fusion and fission was a groundbreaking scientific discovery, but later it destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Technology is never the problem, the problem is humanity and the way we use that technology.

Do you want more examples of technology used wrong? Super famous case: Trump's 2016 elections in the United States. That's technology used wrong. (I'm not going to say for evil because I don't want to get political, but well...) And it that case it want the user's fault, but the company's, whom, being honest, usually are at fault. (And with that I'm not trying to imply that capitalist companies are trash and that society's foundation, based in the capitalist system, are what are leading us to inevitable destruction of humanity and the planet and that it's necessary and urgent a change to society's structural bases and that capitalism leads us inevitably to destruction but... oh well.)

The point is: technology is fantastical. We just have to be careful about how we use it and what for.

I'm an idealist, I know, but I trust in humanity's' innate goodness, and I believe -want to believe-, that we can do things right. Sadly, I've been disappointed over and over again in my seventeen years of life, but that won't make me stop believing. Not yet at least.

We need change. We need lots of changes. On a national scale, on a global scale, in the very foundations of Occidental societies, and in others too. Things have to change. And now we are more and more young people who believe this.

And we are not so young anymore. I'm 17 years old, and this Sunday, August 11th, I'm voting for the first time. We always hear that the youth are the future, and we are. We are more aware, more than ever, the younger generations. Living in the world that we live in, it's impossible not to be aware. We have within our reach more information that's ever even existed, and we live in a world that is, honestly, disastrous and terrifying. But we are aware of this, and we will not put up with it.

All around the world there's a generation that is just now reaching adulthood, a generation that refuses to accept the garbage we are inheriting. I don't want to live in a world like this, I want to do something to change it, in whatever scale I can do. Putting a smile on someone's face counts as a good change for me. Imagine a whole generation wanting to do that, wanting to put smiles on others faces. Wanting to make things better for others, wanting people to stop dying in poverty, to stop dying hungry, to stop being thought of as less because of their skin colour or because of their gender or their sexuality or their religión.

Imagine.

I imagine it and it fills me with hope.

I don't want to live in the world I'm living in. So I'm going to try and change it. And thankfully, I have technology by my side.


End file.
